It is known in the art that steel rule dies offer significant cost advantages over conventional forged and ground dies.
One known manually actuated, semi automatic apparatus for blanking sheet steel utilizes a suction cup array mounted on an elevating frame carried by an overhead trolley to pick up sheet steel pieces and deposit them onto a low friction platform. This trolley arrangement replaces manually feeding the press, thereby reducing manual labor, yet does not enhance production speed over operations that utilize manually fed presses. The low production speed of the known semi automatic apparatus does not allow it to be considered by the automotive industry for the production of panels for vehicles in lieu of hard tooling.
The sheet steel pieces are then pushed across the surface of the low friction platform onto the lower die of a steel rule die set mounted in a blanking press.
The upper die in this apparatus utilizes an array of suction cups thereon to retain the scrap to be removed manually from in between the die set. An unload table is moved into the press t o receive the blank after blanking and another suction cup array mounted on an elevating frame is used to lift the blank off the unload table.
In use, sliding the sheet steel across the low friction platform or using a roller conveyor to transfer the sheet metal, degrades the sheet steel surface and can inhibit the proper application of paint. In addition, the apparatus does not provide for precise positioning of consecutive pieces of sheet steel stock and thereby tends to greater waste. Furthermore, the manual removal of scrap from the press is undesirable and can lead to down time.